


hit the goddamn middle button

by anomalousity



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, Sleepovers, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 20:05:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4679633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomalousity/pseuds/anomalousity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What the fuck do you want?” he asked, glaring down at her with his cold stare, trying for more intimidation than he had. It only took her a second to notice the bags under his eyes, the slight peachy tint to his skin, the almost imperceptible squint of his eyes when he shifted his gaze to the parking lot behind her.</p><p>She held out a Mars bar she’d snuck in her bag. “I come with processed sugars.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	hit the goddamn middle button

It wasn’t until a week after Persephone’s funeral that Blue had picked up her rusty old bike and made her way to Monmouth Manufacturing. Neither Maura nor Calla had said anything, though Blue felt the obvious and terrifying pressure of two sets of eyes between her shoulder blades as she stumbled out the door and into the chilly afternoon.

Gansey had called earlier in the week to tell her to visit Ronan. “You two are alike,” he’d said. “Maybe you can help him get out of this…  _thing_  he’s in.” He’d drawn  _thing_ into more than one syllable, which was what had persuaded her to say that she’ll try to visit but it’s his fault if she gets mauled by a tiny raven and her nightmare of an… owner? Creator? Familiar, maybe?

She tried not to think about it.

Regardless, she was picking her way up the stairs to Monmouth Manufacturing when the sky opened up with a flare, then a  _bang_. She knocked on the door in her businesslike way, three quick, harsh raps of the knuckle near the middle, then a pause for all of five seconds before she was at it again.

She’s on her fifth repetition when the door cracked open with an indignant squawk, Ronan standing behind it with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and Chainsaw perched on the crown of his head.

“What the fuck do you want?” he asked, glaring down at her with his cold stare, trying for more intimidation than he had. It only took her a second to notice the bags under his eyes, the slight peachy tint to his skin, the almost imperceptible squint of his eyes when he shifted his gaze to the parking lot behind her.

She held out a Mars bar she’d snuck in her bag. “I come with processed sugars.”

He stepped back and shoved the door open. “Hurry up, you’re making me let out all the heat.” He was stomping across the main room and into his bedroom before she could consider replying. She pushed the door shut before following behind him, her bag of sweets slung over one shoulder.

When she stepped into his room, she found him with an Xbox controller in one hand and a bottle of Midol in the other. Maybe she stared too long because after a minute he snorted and held out the bottle. “No judgements,” he muttered, before knocking it back and swallowing a few dry.

“Gross,” she replied.

As she pulled out the candy and settled on his bed, she looked about the room with unfeigned curiosity. Ronan was an unknowable creature, in the same way as wild arctic animals and those awe-inspiringly handsome old Hollywood stars; she’d imagined he’d have a room that reflected that. Instead, she’d found a mess. Rather, she found a normal eighteen-year-old boy’s room.

Clothes were flung about the floor in almost artful chaos. Chainsaw’s cage was clean; so clean in fact that it gleamed despite the persistent cloud light. She’d looked at the other side of the room and found another birdcage, though it looked more broken and like something out of an old circus-horror flick than anything else. Ronan’s flat screen was massive, which she’d expected, but it was the only thing that appeared to be taken care of besides the number of knickknacks placed delicately about his shelves and ledges; trophies from Cabeswater, she would imagine.

When her gaze landed back on Ronan, she found a tiny almost-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were fixed on the phone in his lap, shining almost painfully bright in the shady room. She nudged him with her knee before making a dive for the phone.

“Who’s making you smile, Ronan Lynch?” she giggled, fingers slipping on the cold plastic as Ronan tugged his hands high above his head and fixated her with a bratty frown. “Oh my- Ronan, are you blushing?” She tried not to laugh, but a snort slipped out despite her best efforts and the frown that was already straining at the space between Ronan’s eyebrows grew deeper. His ears only grew redder, despite this.

“It's no one,” he said sharply, voice like sharp fingernails scratching thin skin. It didn’t affect her. She climbed up the bed, reaching with all of her almost-five-feet before Ronan managed to wedge his palm onto her forehead and pin her back. “No one,” he repeated, this time a little quieter, a little more anxious.

It got her to back off.

She slumped sideways until she landed half on his shoulder, half against the headboard of his bed. Ronan wasn't straight with anyone, least of all Blue; if this was a ploy at earnestness rather than the real thing she wouldn’t have realized it. It was the nervousness that did it; the same way that Gansey's nervousness betrayed his true intentions. Ronan looked scared.

“So, uh,” he’d started, then he slid down against the bedframe, skinny leg peeking out of the seam of his blankets. He played with the hem before sighing and shucking it off completely. Blue tried to shift her eyes in time from his naked chest, the small, pinprick scars mirroring each other from either side of his rib cage beside the slope of underdeveloped pectorals, the gentle swell of his hips. She tried to look away, but she must have made a noise for Ronan to squirm and shoot her a sly smirk.

“Got the hots for me or something?” he said, chuckling low in his belly. “You know I don’t swing that way, maggot.”

“Fuck off,” she muttered, nudging his shoulder with her own. It was rare to see Ronan so open, despite his brash confidence and overbearing if strangely subtle presence; he didn’t show her the tattoo that spans most of his back until about six months into their friendship, if you could call it that. He was almost relaxed, even accounting for the tension that never quite left his back, or the way he twitched every so often if he wasn’t met with antagonism or a challenge or Adam Parrish and all of what he presents.

She didn’t even notice he’d set his phone in her palm until it was sitting there, blinding screen angled right into her eyes. She blinked a couple of times to clear the fuzzy spots before noticing Adam’s name hovering over a message involving the words, “don’t care,” and, “terribly beautiful,” and a lot of other words that would have probably had Gansey swooning the minute he’d skimmed them.

Then she read it, and more of it, and more of it, and then she blushed.

“He doesn’t care, Blue,” Ronan sighed, fingers picking at the hem of Blue’s dress. “Gansey ‘doesn’t care’ in the way that he’s fucking  _always_ asking if I’m okay or if he needs to talk to the Dean because our Latin teacher of the goddamn week called me the wrong name.” He took a deep breath, then relaxed again after a moment. The phone buzzed in Blue’s hand with another message from Adam, this one equally as gushy as the last, though with enough expletives to negate the gushiness factor.

“Who even asks someone out like this?”

Ronan gave her a knowing look before rolling his eyes up to the ceiling.

“Oh, shut up.”

He laughed.

“I  _will_ punch you, Ronan Lynch, even if I break my hand doing it.”

“Try it, maggot,” he muttered, but there wasn’t any heat in it. He snatched the phone from Blue’s grasp and tapped out a quick reply, then tossed it back at her. “He’s good.”

“Yeah,” she said. Adam was good, like the smell of pine trees after spending a year in the city, or kissing after a lifetime without it. He was good like a slow smile and calloused hands pressed against non-psychic ones, or sharp angles and classic good looks and immediate defense even if the defendee is disliked. Blue wondered if most of that was brought on by her relationship with Adam, but she long since learned it was more Ronan’s unwillingness to let in new people. Adam had told her that it’d taken Ronan almost a year and a half to warm up to him, but that was before Adam and Ronan were Adam-and-Ronan.

Blue would never mention it to him, but she was sure that Ronan had warmed up to her.

They spoke a little about Adam-and-Ronan, or just Adam, or Gansey when Ronan figured out that talking about the time he saw Gansey naked in the Aglionby locker rooms made Blue blush. Noah stopped in to talk, to kiss Ronan’s mouth, then Blue’s cheek, and to remind them to eat. Chainsaw slept as they talked, Blue eventually slumping onto Ronan’s lap, Ronan’s fingers tugging at her wild hair and asking her if he can shave it all off. Eventually he’d grabbed at the Xbox remote and started playing something that looked far too violent to not be made for him but, though Blue didn’t admit it, fun nonetheless.

Of course, Ronan eventually noticed.

He kicked at her knee before reaching over the edge of the bed and retrieving another Xbox controller and tossing it into her lap. “Middle button,” he said when she stared at it with an almost scientific curiosity. “Jesus fuck,” he’d muttered when she mashed the buttons with her index finger, unsure of how to get the car to move. “Holy shit!” he’d shouted when she’d helped him finish the game, seven hours later.

Ronan told her to use his phone to call 300 Fox Way, and she did just that. Maura warned her about getting close to snakes and she heard Calla make what sounded suspiciously like hissing noises in the background. She hung up after another minute of that and told Ronan that she could stay.

They stayed up late, talking and later drinking when Ronan dug out something that smelled like peppermint from the chest at the end of Noah’s bed. Blue may or may not have let Ronan play the murder squash song a few times.

She didn’t remember when she fell asleep, but when she came to the next morning she had all six feet of Ronan spread across her middle, and she was pretty sure he’d been drooling on her dress.

Chainsaw squawked; the flat screen flickered.

Blue hesitated a moment before reaching over and running her fingers over Ronan’s spikey-short hair, thumbing at the slight indentations in his skull, teasing at the line of raised tissue trailing from the back of his ear to the beginning of his neck. She checked Ronan’s phone for the time, tugged his discarded blankets up to her chin, then settled back in to go back to sleep.

Maybe, Blue thought, idly rubbing the back of Ronan’s neck where the muscles had tensed until they relaxed again, maybe being friends with Ronan Lynch wasn’t a tolerable thing. Maybe it was a wonderful thing.

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me on [tumblr](http://frouvaire.tumblr.com).


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